BREAKING : Former Federal Permanent Secretary Ahmed Joda Is Dead

 

The Head Of President Buhari's Transition Committee, Ahmed Joda Dies At 91 

Ahmed Joda passed on Friday in Yola, the Adamawa capital, where he had his permanent residence. 

The elder statesman was born in Girei, a town and local government area near Jimeta, the administrative section of the state capital.

He died at 91, according to a family friend, Fenny Fwa, a prince of the Mbula Kingdom of Adamawa State who described Joda as a detribalised Nigerian who had the ability to “sooth the nerves of a nation in perpetual conflict.”

Joda began his civil service career in the then Northern Regional Government and later joined the Federal Civil Service and rose to be one of the ‘Super Permanent Secretaries’ of the 1970s.

He retired as Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Industries under the military government of General Yakubu Gowon.

He attended Yola Elementary and Middle schools before proceeding to Barewa College, Zaria.

After completing his secondary education in 1948, Joda was admitted to Moor Plantation, Ibadan and worked briefly at an agricultural centre in Yola before entering the field of journalism at Gaskiya Corporation, Zaria.

He served in the government as a Chief Information Officer and then later Permanent Secretary from 1962 to 1967.

In 1967, following the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War, he was seconded to the Federal Civil Service as a Permanent Secretary serving in the federal ministries of Information, Education and Industries, where he retired in 1978.

He retired into private business during the Second Nigerian Republic, where he served as chairman and board member of various companies including the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Nigerian Communications Commission, Pastoral Resolve, SCOA, Nigeria, Chagoury Group, Flour Mills of Nigeria, and the Nigerian LNG.

He was also a member of the 1988 Constituent Assembly which planned the constitutional transition of the Third Nigerian Republic.

In 1999, he was appointed the head of the committee to advise the Presidency on Poverty Alleviation and in 2015, headed the Muhammadu Buhari presidential transition.